


The Sands

by armsofthestorm



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Smut, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 20:11:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8591896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armsofthestorm/pseuds/armsofthestorm
Summary: Set during the sandstorm in Return of the Jedi, Luke is pulled several decades back in time and meets a younger Ben Kenobi.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celeste9](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/gifts).



The Force heaves, and there is a great groundswell of-- something. Of power. The desert is shifting beneath his feet, wilder than the sandstorm, earth and sky and body all caught up in a storm that is greater by far then the sum of its parts. Luke can't see anything through the sand whipping around fast or the strange, sourceless illumination that emanates and fills the air. The others have vanished, along with the Falcon, and nothing is visible but sand and light, not even his own hands or torso.

One moment, Luke is overcome by a violent wave of nausea, and he doubles over, coughing and choking and retching into the sand, throat raw and guts twisting. Then there is a sense of great dislocation in the Force, and the next moment all is quiet. The sand and earth settles, the light dulls, and his vision clears to reveal what is for all appearances a calm Tatooine afternoon. He gags again, spits out a mouthful of sand. The nausea brought on by-- whatever that was is fading, then growing again with startling rapidity and his mind is starting to race, trying to understand what just happened, trying to work out where his friends are, where he is.

Luke takes a deep breath and tries to locate himself in the Force, reaching out for familiarity, for guidance.

There is nothing, only the rarified embrace of Tatooine’s own native life-signatures, thin and spare on the ground, and ripples in the Force apparently caused by his own appearance. At least there is some certainty here; the desert, Tatooine, Luke knows. He takes another breath, and reaches out further. There is a city somewhere to the west of his position; he can feel its inhabitants like bright sparks at the edge of his vision. So he is roughly in the same place, geographically speaking, that he was when he left, but-- everything feels subtly different somehow, and his friends are gone. Not killed, not taken by force-- he would be able to feel an echo of that kind of violence-- but simply gone, as if they had never existed in the first place.

Luke remains in his state of meditation for some minutes, mind inert but for abstract, dispassionate observation, and body equally still. Then there is a subtle nudge at the edge of his consciousness: someone approaching, another Force user. Luke pulls himself from his trance, slowly, and begins to accustom himself to the physical world again. He opens his eyes and looks around. Desert and sky, as far as the eye can see. He is still on his knees, he realises, trousers deep in fine, red sand and hands clutching at the stuff like it would be any use as an anchor at all.

The other Force user is getting closer, he can feel it. So he pushes himself up out of the sand, ignoring the waves of dizziness the action causes him, brushes the worst of the outer dust off his skin and clothing, and goes to meet whoever it might be.

He sets a course by the unwavering light of the stranger’s presence in the force and starts walking, the desert stretching out around him. It feels like a dream. Like every step he takes brings him closer to the horizon-- the horizon of wakefulness-- and yet at the same time further away from the real world, the march of time stepping backwards with his each embattled step into the desert sand.

After a time, maybe hours, maybe minutes, there appears a figure on the horizon, clothed in dark brown and keeping a steady pace towards him. They get closer and closer, dwarfed against huge swathes of sand, until they are face to face.

“Anakin?” says the man, who is haggard looking although younger than Luke expected. “No, that's not right. Force, you look--” the man stretches out a hand towards him, as if to touch the side of his face, but he never completes the gesture, simply leaving his arm outstretched between then for a few tension-filled moments. Luke is gripped by a return of the dizziness which rise higher and higher in his stomach and in his head, feeling recognition light up in his chest with the nausea of possibility, more improbable than ever and yet, the Force is telling him that this is the truth.

“You're Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he says, almost given to laugh. “Ben, where am I? Am I dead?”

He barely has time to react before Ben draws a lightsaber on him, holding the glowing blade to his throat and looking calmly down at him. 

“How do you know my name?” Ben asks in quiet, restrained tone. “Did the Empire send you? Are you reporting to Darth Vader?”

“Ben,” Luke says, “Ben, what are you talking about? It’s me, Luke.”

He takes in the grim expression on his face, the harsh lines around his eyes and mouth, and the lack of any recognition or kindness in his eyes and is suddenly afraid. This is Ben Kenobi, but a Ben Kenobi who is some decades from the serene old man Luke knew, and he has no idea how he will react. He is just trying to work out the best way to surrender, when his dizziness reaches an unbearable tenor, and he collapses backwards onto the sand, darkness encroaching from all sides of his vision.

 

\----

 

The next thing he knows, he is swimming slowly back to consciousness, lying down on some kind of semi-soft surface, like a bed, scratchy fabric underneath his head and neck. Some kind of homespun pillow?

He breathes through a new wave of nausea, and slowly opens his eyes, taking in the interior of the room, with its rough walls and sparse furnishings-- like Ben’s house on Tatooine but even sparer.

“Where--” Luke says, “Where am I? How did I get here?”

“I am hardly the man I was,” says the younger Ben Kenobi, who Luke had not noticed sitting on a chair beside him, “but I’m not so far gone as to leave a young man to die in the desert, Imperial spy or no.”

“Thank you,” says Luke automatically, looking up at him, then he remembers: the desert, the younger Ben drawing his lightsaber on him as soon as he said his name. “Ben, do you really not know me?”

“Evidently not,” says Ben. “And presently, I am rather more worried about how you know who _I_ am.”

“I’m Luke,” he says. “Of course I know who you are. Before you died, you were training me to defeat the Empire. Before Darth Vader killed you.”

Ben is looking at him with a concerned expression on his face. “I’m quite sure I would remember it if Darth Vader had killed me-- Luke, is it?”

Then he goes still, like he’s realised something horrible. “No. No, it can’t be. Luke Skywalker is--”

“You do know me,” says Luke, struggling to push himself up into sitting position against the wall behind him. He still feels quite ill, dizzy and too hot and sick in his skin. “Ben, that’s me, Luke Skywalker? Remember? Am I dead? Are we both dead? Is this r--”

“You can’t be,” Ben says, face oddly blank. “Luke Skywalker is a baby.”

Luke is silent for a few moments, facts slotting into place. He has an idea, but-- 

“Ben,” he says. “Ben, what year is it?”

“Why,” he says, with a wry twist to his mouth. “It is the first year of our glorious Galactic Empire, of course.”

“Oh,” says Luke, and feels a spike of helpless panic at the implications of that response. “Right. Ben, I’m going to tell you something now that is going to sound insane, and just-- hear me out.”

“Go on,” says Ben. “I’m quite open to any explanations you might’ve come up with, as I can make neither heads nor tails of this situation.”

“Good,” says Luke, blood again rushing with nausea. “Because I think I’ve just travelled in time.”

Instead of disbelief, what Luke sees in Ben’s next look is careful regard. Luke continues: “Before, when we-- met, out in the desert, you called me Anakin.”

Ben inclines his head. 

“Anakin Skywalker is my father.”

Ben is still looking at him thoughtfully, though he also looks briefly very sad at Luke’s last pronouncement.

“I know that you trained him,” Luke says. Now he's started, he finds he can't stop talking at all. “And I know Anakin became Darth Vader.” His ears are ringing. Truly, time travel was not the kindest thing one could do to one's system. “You brought me here to protect, left me with my aunt and uncle and lived as Old Ben Kenobi, the crazy hermit of the Jundland wastes. For years and years-- I wan nineteen when you started to train me and--"

At this, a series of emotions that Luke would find difficult to name flicker’s across Ben’s face. Did they represent shame? Guilt? Pity? Longing? Still, Ben schools his features quickly and after a moment, begins to speak.

“Yesterday, when I found you," he says, speaking carefully, "I had sensed a disturbance of some kind, in the Force. Not especially of the light, but not of the dark either, simply... an upheaval. A change, rippling outwards. The epicentre of the ripples-- that is, you-- was, I sensed, somewhere to the south.” He gestures with one hand in the direction of the door.

“That you believe you have travelled in time-- in all the records of history I have read, I have never come across any conclusive proof that this has ever happened before.” Luke frowns, unsure of where this is going. “And yet, there have always been whispers, in tales from mad old men and women and myths for children. Even scraps of evidence, easily brushed aside in favour of less improbable explanations for their existence, easier ones for the more hidebound among us to believe.

“The ways of the Force are mysterious indeed, Luke, as I am sure you well know, and these are strange times, so in the absence of any other explanation that would account for all the facts-- I am left with no choice currently other than to take your word for it.”

He takes a breath, settles himself, and smiles grimly.

“I’m so sorry, Luke,” Ben says, his voice hardly more than awhisper. “I’m so sorry about what the Galaxy has become, that you never knew your father or your mother, for my part in this unhappiness-- for everything.

Luke goes to speak, but at Ben's last words, the sickness from before had welled up in him once more, reaching a fever pitch of lightheadedness and nausea, until his vision starts blurring out and everything goes dark and very quiet.

 

\---

 

When Luke awakens this time, it is to the feeling of a damp cloth being wiped across his face, and to a greatly lessened feeling of illness, though his throat feels a lot like he’s tried to swallow half the sands of Tatooine. He blinks his eyes open slowly, and is greeted by the sight, again, of the younger Ben Kenobi, this time holding a flannel in one hand and a small bowl of water in the other.

“I’m glad to see you’re awake,” Ben says, smiling down at him. “You had me quite worried for a while there."

“Ben,” says Luke, and his voice comes out in a rasp. “How long was I out for?”

“Only a few hours, this time,” Ben says. “You had quite the fever— the aftereffects of your ah— unexpected temporal journeying, I expect. It was quite high, dangerously high for a while there, and quite unresponsive to anything I tried with the Force, but it broke some time around dusk and you quieted down quite considerably.”

Luke nods. “Thank you again,” he says, and coughs against the dryness in his throat, which makes it feel like he’s just swallowed one of those stone-cutting blades whole.

“It’s no problem,” says Ben, rubbing small circles into Luke’s shoulder. “It’s not as if I have very many other things to do with my time, living all the way out here.” 

“Could I have some water?” Luke asks, voice straining against the pain that tightens his throat.

“Of course,” says Ben, and brushes the damp hair off Luke’s forehead with an absent smile. He then stands, and walks across the room to fetch a cup from the bare kitchen, then to the corner where he fills the cup from some primitive pump system which must be attached to a below-ground water tank. They’d had a pump a lot like this one at the farmstead during Luke’s childhood, though by the time he was in his teens they had upgraded to a mechanical system which was supposed to conserve moisture.

 Ben walks back across the room and helps Luke to sit up against the pillows before handing him the cup with a smile.

“Don’t drink too fast,” he says. “You’ll only make yourself sick.”

Luke smiles back. “Thank you,” he says, and takes a sip of the blessedly cool water. “I won’t.”

“Good lad,” says Ben, and stands up, dusting his hands off on the front of his cloak. “Now that I’m quite sure you aren’t going to end up dead if I leave you here alone, I need to go and check on the moisture vaporators.”

“It’s the middle of the night,” says Luke. He was reckless growing up, but even he wouldn’t have taken his chances with the desert at night, and especially not as close as this place is to the Jundland Wastes.

Ben only smiles, a little grimly, and puts another, thicker cloak on over the top of the threadbare first, and goes to the door to pull on his boots. Luke sees him check the placement of an item on his belt— his lightsaber, no doubt— and sweeps his hair back off his face, turning around to face Luke in front of the door.

“I’ll be back before dawn,” he says. “If not… well, I’m sure you’ll never find my body, so don’t worry about trying.”

“Goodbye,” says Luke, feeling a bit helpless.

“Goodbye,” says Ben, and strides out of the door into the clear cold of the desert night.

Luke sits in the new silence of the house, finishing his cup of water slowly and trying to decide whether or not he should stand up and get some more or wait until he feels steadier.

Oddly enough, he can still feel Ben’s presence, a steady light like a star at the edges of his awareness. He takes hold of this, and reassures himself that Ben will be fine. If it took a lightsaber duel with Darth Vader to kill the man in the end, Ben is hardly going to be in danger from an ornery krayt dragon, and Luke had seen him, or at least his older self, handle Tusken Raiders with no more difficulty than it might take another man to brush off a swarm of flies. Besides which, all very immediate worries aside, Luke knows all to well exactly how crucial water is on this dry, barren planet; if the vaporators go wrong somehow, through neglect or sabotage or simple mechanical error, he and Ben both will be in far more trouble than the night alone can provide.

Eventually the cup is empty, and Luke makes his way slowly across the room to the pump, expecting to throw up or pass out again, but the expected nausea doesn’t come. He feels less than steady on his feet, but just weak, and not sick and dizzy. Water flows easily from the pump, better than it did from the one Luke remembers, which was old and creaky, and, cup of water in hand, he walks back across the room and sits back down on the pallet.

Soon afterward, Luke feels himself drifting back into sleep, under the relative warmth of the blankets and the solid security of Ben’s house.

He awakens again to the sound of gentle activity coming from the direction of the door; there’s a creak from the hinges, and Ben Kenobi’s unmistakeable light in the Force gets closer and closer. Luke is just barely aware of Ben’s footsteps making their way toward his bed, hardly notices when Ben puts the back of his hand to his forehead, then the long moment of silence as Ben stands over him, and then the sound of steps again, this time receding in what must be the direction of the other room.

Luke smiles to himself, and drifts back off into slumber.

 

\----

 

In the morning, Luke awakes with this first sun, bright and early and really quite hungry.

His stomach rumbles as he sits up to get out of bed, and he wonders whether or not he ought to try and find something to eat for himself, or wake Ben and ask. He walks gingerly down the corridor that he thinks leads to the other rooms in the house, and looks in through the door to see the shape of Ben’s body, still and asleepunder a rough woven blanket.

His face is visible from the doorway, and Luke notices that the ever-present furrows of worry on his brow are more relaxed than Luke has seen them, and he decides to leave him be. The poor man’s probably hardly slept in the two days since he arrived, and Luke doesn’t want to be more of a burden than he already has been. Besides, he thinks he’d quite like the space to think things through, without the complicated mass of emotions that the sight of his old mentor, younger and yet still somehow less whole, inspires in him.

He’s sitting at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and a piece of the hard, grainywhen Ben emerges from the other room, looking a little drawn but otherwise upright and almost smiling.

“Good morning,” says Ben.

“Morning,” says Luke. “How were the vaporators?”

“Oh, well enough,” says Ben, and pulls up the other chair. “How do you feel?”

“Much better, thank you,” says Luke. Ben smiles at him, the lines around his eyes crinkling, and Luke smiles back, 

They pass a few days in more or less comfortable silence, talking sometimes at meals, going about the chores that need doing in a rhythm that comes naturally to them, meditating away the hot, unproductive hours of the day in the shade of the house.

Luke spends house trying to immerse himself in the Force deeply enough that it might be given to answer his questions-- why is he here? are his friends safe in the future without him?-- but to no avail. The Force stays as silent as the sands, and Luke begins to realise that perhaps the answers will not be so easily given.

Instead, he resolves to live in his current present as much as he did in his past one-- to play out this test from the Force and hopefully to gain from it.

Ben takes him out at twilight on the third day, and starts to teach him lightsaber play-- it is strange, how alike he is to his older counterpart, down to the exact phrasings they both used to describe certain parts of the katas,

“How much swordsmanship did-- well, how much did I teach you,” he had asked, a little hesitantly, as they were eating dinner the night before, “in the future. I got the impression, from a few of the things you said, that we didn’t have a great deal of time for your training, and I was wondering-- how are you with a lightsaber?”

“You and Yoda taught me enough,” says Luke, then he pauses. “Enough to survive, so far. I suspect not much, compared to what you knew. Know.”

Ben nods. “I don’t know how much time we have now, either,” he says. “But there are no coincidences in the Force, and perhaps you were sent here so that I would have more time to teach you.” He rubs a hand over his beard. “And if not, it is at least something to do while we're both in the middle of this dry old empty desert.”

He smiles ruefully at Luke, who laughs, and they both clear the table of the dishes from their meal.

 

\----

 

  
The next night, Luke can hear the sounds of some disturbance coming from Ben’s room. Ben is saying something in his sleep, pleading with someone. Nightmares? Luke thinks, and rises, walking the short difference from the bed where he is sleeping to the couch in the other room in a matter of seconds.

Ben is indeed in the grips of a nightmare, twisting and writhing under the covers, moaning quietly to himself.

“Anakin…” he says. “Anakin, don’t do this, please.” He clutches at his throat like he’s being choked, and Luke can hear his breathing, laboured and harsh in the dead stillness of the desert night. He takes the final few steps to Ben’s bedside and puts a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

Ben’s eyes fly open, but there is no recognition in them as he sees Luke’s face. Before he can react, Ben has him pinned to the bed, his throat crushed beneath the weight of Ben’s forearm and his body almost immobile beneath the rest of him. 

“Ben,” he says, forcing the words out from his abused throat. “Ben, it’s Luke.”

Awareness flickers across Ben’s face, and a moment later his weight is gone from on top of Luke and he’s leapt back to a few feet away, ashen-faced and with his back pressed against the solidity of the wall.

“Luke, I’m so sorry,” says Ben, holding a hand up to his mouth. “Force, I’m so sorry. 

Luke sits up from the bed, and puts his feet on the floor and stands, very slowly so as not to spook him. He walks over to where Ben is standing, and on impulse, he reaches out a hand to cup the side of his face, gentle and slow. He strokes his thumb along Ben’s jaw, stroking his beard, trying to encourage calm with his every gesture. “It’s alright,” he says. “It’s only me.”

Ben accepts the touch with some trepidation, but he doesn’t move away, and then almost imperceptibly, he angles his face into Luke’s hand, leaning into it.

“I never wanted anyone to see that,” Ben says quietly. He looks Luke in the eye. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Luke takes a step closer toward him, so that there are only a few inches between them. Slowly, he leans in to kiss Ben’s cheek, just on the cheekbone. The change in Ben is instantaneous. He stiffens, then relaxes absolutely in the next breath. “It’s alright,” Luke says again. “I know you didn’t mean to.”

“Luke…” Ben says, and brings his own hands up to cup Luke’s face. “Luke, that’s the worst part of it. You shouldn’t— I shouldn't--”

“It’s okay,” Luke says. He isn’t quite sure what he’s doing, only that he has no intention of stopping now.

“I am so very sorry for my appalling lack of control,” says Ben. Luke’s heart is beating very fast, whether it be from the adrenaline leftover from Ben’s attack or the simple, palpable tension between them, he doesn’t know.

But then Ben pulls Luke towards him, to kiss him hard and wet on the mouth, tangling the fingers of one hand in the hair at the nape of Luke’s neck and pulling him in closer. 

Luke’s body responds before he has much of an idea what’s happening, and he is taken by the same wave of heat that seems to have consumed Ben, and he kisses him back in kind, pressing his body closer and pressing him against the wall, clutching at shoulders gone taut and opening his mouth to allow Ben to lick into his mouth.

Ben’s beard is rough against his cheeks, and Luke leans into the texture of it, wanting to be closer, wanting to kiss harder, to have more. He moans around Ben’s tongue, deep in his mouth, and tries to breathe against the rush of sensation, the sheer thrill of it. He can feel against his thigh that Ben is hard, and the thought makes him moan again; he can feel himself stiffening in his pants.

Luke kisses along Ben’s jawline and down onto his neck and starts biting at the skin on his throat. Ben moans as Luke sucks at the side of his neck, moving slowly down and worrying the skin with his teeth as he goes. Ben’s shirt is too high around his neck, and Luke pulls it away to get at more skin. Ben moans as he bites his collarbones, and then licks up the sensitive column of skin up the middle of his throat, sucks at the skin then presses his tongue hard against it, so he knows it would hurt, almost, but feel just odd enough to become just  _sensation_  in the place of pain. 

Ben moans again, low in his throat, and Luke lifts his head from his chest to smile at him, and kiss him quite gently on the mouth. Ben makes a soft, half-muffled sound, strokes the back of Luke’s hair, down his back, and thenswitches their positions so Luke is pressed against the wall, Ben kissing down his neck, increasing in pace as he bites the skin hard enough to bruise and then licks over the marks, soothing them, making Luke feel almost incandescent in his skin.

Luke makes a disappointed sound in his throat as Ben relents in his attentions to his neck, but then Ben unties the loose knot that Luke has to secure his sleeping shirt, and he pulls it off his shoulders to start biting and kissing and sucking at the skin on his chest, rolling two thumbs over his hard nipples, pressing at them, circling around them unbearably and scraping over the sensitive skin with ragged thumbnails so Luke moans and arches his back, grinding against Ben helplessly, lost in it.

One of Ben’s hands roams down Luke’s back, grips hard at the flesh of his backside, the other starts to undo the tie on his sleeping pants. Ben lowers his head to start kissing down Luke’s torso in earnest, down his chest and his stomach, beard grazing against skin in a wonderful counterpoint to the slickness of his tongue and lips.

“Ben,” Luke breathes, when Ben goes to his knees before him. He pulls Luke’s pants down just far enough to free his cock, and sucks at the junction of thigh and navel. He presses his head back against the wall, wishing Ben would just get onto it already, stop driving him to distraction when by all accounts this should be a quick, late-night _fuck_. 

Then the feeling of Ben’s soft tongue and scratching whiskers vanishes from his awareness, and Luke looks back down at him, ready toprotest, but Ben looks up at him, eyes bright, and Luke goes almost weak at the knees as he somehow contrives to push or lift Luke around and ontohis back on the sleeping couch, arms above his head and sprawled like a dirty centrefold in one of those flimsi porno mags.

His sleeping pants, he realises, are only halfway down his thighs, and he spares a moment to wonder how much of a mess he looks, with his hair tousled and a marked up torso and breathing as hard as he would if he’d just run a few klicks.

Ben, above him, is of course only a little mussed around the edges, sweating a little, breathing a little harder then usual, a barely perceptible film of sweat over his face. He is very graceful, Luke thinks. Solid, but lithe and strong. 

Luke reaches up for him, and Ben straddles Luke over the waist— Luke groans helplessly as Ben settles his weight slowly and deliberately over Luke’s crotch, the fabric of his own pants almost too rough against his cock— and he reaches to pull Ben’s sleep shirt off, revealing a compact torso, as well scarred as it is muscled, and already a few shades lighter than the skin of Ben’s face and neck and hands, the parts of the body that get the worst of Tatooine’s twin suns and their harsh radiation.

Ben looks down at him and smiles serenely, like he thinks Luke might nothave noticed the hitch in his breath as he’d shifted underneath him, like he might not notice that he is trembling very, very slightly in his extremities, from arousal or need or simple energy.

“You’re very beautiful,” Ben tells him, and runs his hands up the sides of his torso, softly, nearly ticklish, and then he leans over to kiss Luke on the mouth, warm and slick and slow. He moves on to Luke’s shoulder, taking his time again with the skin that stretches over collarbone and muscle, then moves across his chest, kissing and sucking gently and so agonisingly slowly with it that Luke needs all his self control not to moan and arch his back and carry on, beg Ben to go further, to take more, and to do it now. In this position, Ben straddling him, Luke’s cock keeps brushing against Ben’s through the worn fabric of his sleep pants, and he bucks a little against the teasing possibility of friction, and moans again, louder. 

At this, Ben raises his head from Luke’s chest and sits up again. Luke has to breathe very deeply through the feeling of the warmth of Ben’s body settling back on his cock, and not to groan in frustration that Ben still doesn’t seem to have any intention of just finishing this off. 

Then Ben picks up both of Luke’s wrists and brings them up above his head. He keeps them in place with one hand, and then takes his attention back to Luke’s chest. This time, he pinches Luke’s right nipple— hard, and then again. Luke almost yells at that, much more sensitive there than he thought he was. It hurts, but gods, if he doesn't love every second. 

Ben smiles at him, and does the same with the other nipple, then, keeping ahold of Luke’s wrists, starts to bite down Luke’s torso, leaving what will no doubt be an impressive trail of bite marks as he goes.

When Ben reaches his the lower part of his stomach, Luke is incoherent and straining against Ben’s hold on him. _Force_ does Ben's mouth feel good as he licks a stripe just under Luke’s belly button, and Ben looks so good at it, intent and serious about what he’s doing, long eyelashes and soft mouth and wonderfully textured beard. Ben looks up at him for a moment and tells him: “Stay still,” as if warning him. Luke nods, though he’s sure that he’d agree to just about anything by this point if he thought it’d keep Ben doing what he was doing, and Ben let’s go of Luke’s wrists to start pulling Luke’s pants off his legs entirely.

Luke moans as Ben settles between his thighs, and holds him steady as he licks the head of his cock. _Finally_ , and Luke nearly sobs because it feels so fantastic, trying to arch his back into the slick heat and clutching at the rough sheet with his arms still in place behind his head, holding on for dear life.

Ben takes the base of his cock in hand and gives it a few gentle strokes, experimental, before bringing his mouth back down onto his cock, this time sucking properly. The next few minutes are a blur, and Luke tries not to come immediately, lost in the tight, wet heat of Ben’s mouth and the sight of his cheeks hollowed around his cock, lips stretched and head bobbing obscenely up and down along the length of him.

He has some sense that keeping himself still is important to Ben, in some esoteric way maybe related to the nightmare Luke had woken him from, and so he resists the urge to bring his hands down to stroke Ben's hair or hold his head in place, and he tries to keep his hips still as possible under the grip of Ben’s hands on his thighs.

When he comes, Luke tries to give him a garbled, pleasure-incoherent warning, but Ben swallows deeply around his cock anyway, and keeps his mouth in place to coax him through the aftershocks. When he raises his head, Ben's mouth is red and slick, and he smiles as he sees Luke’s wrists still in place. 

 _“Force_ , Ben,” says Luke, somewhat breathily, sounding as well-fucked as he feels. He watches as Ben sits up in a rather good impression of his usual composure, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and looking pleased with himself, if in a very quiet, characteristic way. Luke pushes himself up on stiff elbows and struggles against bonelessness into his own sitting position. “Come here,” he says.

He reaches out to Ben and Ben moves forward, and then they’re kissing once more, Luke pulling Ben’s shirt off slowly and untying the knot on his sleep pants. He then encourages Ben to lay down on the bed so that Luke can pull them off, and then gets him to roll onto his side, Luke curling his own body around him, chest to back and Luke’s mostly soft cock nestling between Ben’s buttocks.

“Luke...” says Ben, and Luke buries his face in the place where Ben’s neck meets his shoulder, breathing in the salt and sweat of his skin, and lifts his head to allow one of Luke’s arms to snake under his neck. Luke he uses the other hand to smooth down Ben’s side, making patterns on the sensitive skin of his stomach as his hand gets lower, playing with the soft skin of Ben’s inner thigh between gentle fingers.

Ben makes a soft noise, and twitches a little under his hands, and Luke encourages him to settle back into him, the back of his body fitting well into the curves and angles of the front of Luke’s. He kisses Ben’s neck tenderly, and angles the arm that is resting underneath it so that he can bend it back and stroke a little awkwardly at Ben’s hair.   

Ben sighs and relaxes into him further, and lets out a quiet little moan as Luke pinches his nipple, strokes down his side again and thentakes Ben’s cock in hand, thumbing over the tip and spreading the wetness gathered there around the head, trying to be gentle, trying to make Ben feel safe in his own pleasure. He has some idea, formed deep in abstraction, that Ben’s more dominant mode when he was sucking Luke off had to do with that, Ben wanting to give but not take, lest he lose control of himself, his want, or worse, lose the thing he wanted in the first place.

Ben is mostly silent as Luke jerks him off. It would almost be mechanical, businesslike, without the pitch and pace of his breathing and the tension Luke can feel growing in his body, the few small sounds that he seems unable to muffle, all small signs that he might be coming apart beneath Luke’s hands. Luke keeps stroking his hair intermittently, and kissing the side of his neck, and he keeps up a steady pace on his cock, not feeling the need to draw this one out overly much. 

Ben comes with a harsh cry, and Luke feels him spill into his hand, his whole body trembling against his own. He gives a few last, very gentles strokes, up and down Ben’s softening cock, and they lie there, still, for a few moments, before Luke moves to wipe his sticky hand on the sheets, and Ben shuffles him over a little bit so that he can lie on his back, Luke still pressed up beside him and with an arm thrown over his chest.

He turns to look at Luke and smiles, cups the side of his face and kisses him softly on the mouth. He still tastes like Luke’s come, and Luke thinks that it’s a little revolting, but also, kind of hot and intimate in a way Luke’s a bit surprised he likes, especially with, well-- Ben Kenobi.

“Thank you,” Ben says, stroking the side of Luke’s face. “Force-- I--”

“You don’t have to talk,” says Luke. “Let’s just stay here for a while like this.”

“Of course,” Ben says, and relaxes beside him, breathing evening out and face going peaceful. He’s asleep within minutes, and Luke creeps off to the fresher to get a flannel to clean up with, then joins him back on the bed.

It’s nice to have someone to fall asleep next to, he thinks. Now that Han and Leia and Chewie-- and Lando, too-- are so far off, and everything seems even more uncertain and strange than it had before he got here.

 

\---- 

 

Luke wakes to an empty space in the bed beside him, and the sound of sonics coming from the 'fresher. He stretches, looks down at his body-- at the sheer number of love bites littered across his chest and stomach, he makes a face-- and starts to go about his day as has become usual, Ben joining him at the table a few minutes later, clean and fluffy-haired from his wash. 

"I think the sonics need fixing," says Ben as he sits down. He looks up at Luke. "Would you mind--?"

Luke nods. "I'll take a look," he says. "I was going to have a shower now anyway."

"Thank you," Ben says, absently scratching at the side of his face. "I never got on as well as I'd like to with mechanics, and sonics are bloody fiddly wee things." 

"Oh, I know," says Luke with a laugh. "I used to like the challenge."

"Really?" says Ben. 

"Maybe I have more patience than you," says Luke. He never would have dreamed of saying something like that to Old Ben, but the younger version of him seems to have a slightly higher tolerance for teasing. Maybe he's more used to it, Luke thinks. Not having lived nearly two decades on his own and all.  

Ben laughs. "Not likely," he says. "But you're welcome to all the vexing mechanical problems I keep having crop up nevertheless."

"I'm very grateful," Luke says, deadpan. "I just don't know what I'd do with myself all day if any of these machines could just keep the sand out of their sensitive parts." 

Ben laughs again, louder this time. "Would that any of us could keep the sand out of our sensitive parts," he says. He looks at Luke directly and raises an eyebrow, but otherwise keeps a completely straight face. "Alas, even a Jedi cannot stand against the unremitting progress of tiny, itchy particles of dust beneath his clothes."

Luke struggles to keep a straight face for a mere moment, but then giggles outright. "And here I thought you were a stern old man!" he says. 

"I'm terribly sorry," says Ben, the corners of his own mouth twitching against composure. "I never meant to shatter any carefully maintained illusions about your beloved mentor, my very own future self." 

"Oh no, shatter away," says Luke, absently swirling at the remains of the tea in his cup. "It's not as if it hasn't been quite enjoyable for me." 

Ben raises his eyebrow once more. "Really?" he says, but this time it sounds almost-- flirtatious. 

"I don't know about you, but I do tend to enjoy it when people give me blowjobs," Luke says, this time managing to keep up his perfect sabacc face. It's a struggle, but it is very much worth it to see the slightly choked look on Ben's face across the table. 

"Do you," he says, once he has apparently regained the ability to speak. "Well then. I might just take you up on that offer to keep on shattering."

And now it's Luke's turn to be struck speechless. "Right," he says. "Good." 

The sonic showers, it is quite needless to say, do not get their promised inspection for quite a few hours.

 

\----

 

A few days later, Ben tells him: “You remind me very much of Anakin." He says it with a smile as they both pause to catch their breath after a particularly energetic bout of sparring. “Especially seeing you with a lightsaber. You have his flair for doing the unexpected.”

“You didn’t seem to have any problem expecting me,” says Luke, propping himself up against the wall and breathing hard. “I could barely get a shot past your guard, and it didn’t even look like you were trying.”

Ben laughs. “I’m a lot older than you, and I have much more experience,” he says. “But you would be surprised at how close you came to hitting me on some occasions. Given a few more years-- who can say where you might be.”

“A few _years_?” says Luke, feigning exasperation. “I don’t think I can take a few more days of this!”

Ben laughs, and picks up the flask of water he’s brought outside with him, takes a long drink and then tosses it to Luke, sitting down in the shade of the doorway. Luke takes his own drink, and moves to join him. 

“You remind me of your mother, too,” Ben says. “She was a great woman, kind and good and always ready to stand up for her principles. One of the few politicians I've ever had any respect for. You are far more balanced than Anakin was; I think you get that from Padmé.”

Luke is silent, a thought that had been playing around the edges of his thoughts since the night they’d fucked coming to the forefront of his mind once more.

“Did you ever-- with my father, or my mother,” he manages to say, before he can think any better of it. He had been wondering, since the night they had sex, if Ben were looking for someone else in his bed, not him. Not that he thought Ben was really crazy, and thought he actually was his father or anything, it was just-- a thought. “I just-- the way you talk about them, I wondered, did you-- you know--”

He’s pretty sure that his face is going even redder than it already was, and he considers suggesting they drop the subject entirely, but Ben only looks at him for a moment, calm and measured.

“I never slept with either of your parents, if that’s what you mean,” he says. "Not in that sense." Then, with a wry half-smile, continues: “I may be a lonely, mad old hermit, but I’d like to think I’d’ve had the presence of mind not to sleep with the son of an ex-lover, however distressed I may have been from at the time.”

He pauses, and looks down at his hands.

“I did love them, though. Your father, at his best, was a great light in the Force, like these suns.” He gestures absently to the sky. “I dedicated my life to him-- I would have done anything for him, I think. I probably still would, if he were just willing to-- and your mother was beautiful, in every way. But no, neither of them ever-- came into my bed"

Luke is silent for several long moments. “I'm sorry I asked,” he says. “I shouldn’t’ve, that was private--”

“It was probably a fair question,” says Ben. “And you do have a right to know about your parents. But everything is very complicated. I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” says Luke. 

"It isn't really," says Ben. "In general." 

"No," says Luke. "But given the circumstances." He puts his hand on Ben's for a moment, wanting to offer some small assurance to him.

"I suppose," Ben replies. He puts his other hand on top of Luke's, and they sit there in silence for several minutes, each lost in their own thoughts, the sand, the sky, the unrelenting line of the horizon stretching out before them. 

"I've not asked," says Ben, breaking the quiet with his words, "but I have been wondering, do you have any plans for the future, here?" 

“I haven't considered it very much, actually," he says, a few moments later. "It’s not as if I have very many options here-- on Tatooine, in the past. I don't think I'd last very long off-planet, not with no money and no friends and the Empire. And I feel like you’re important, Ben, to whatever I have to do here, somehow. So--” 

“So you plan to stay?” finishes Ben. He sounds thoughtful, but also like he's trying not to sound hopeful, Luke thinks.

“Yes,” says Luke. “Both because I have no idea where I’d go,” he says, "and while I can stay-- I knew the man you become, Ben, and he was kind and wise, but he was also very sad. He had been very lonely for a very long time. I wouldn't want you to be alone, not if I can help it.”

Ben nods, and after a minute he says: “I’m glad."

Then he grins. “Another round?” he says, putting a hand on his lightsaber.

Luke laughs at him, and they both keep on grinning as they rise to their feet and take up stances for sparring.

 


End file.
